Urban Gardening: from New York to Detroit

I found an article this afternoon called "From Motown to Growtown: The Greening of Detroit", a mediocre article that tells of a potentially very inspiring comeback. Detroit, at its 1950 zenith, had a population of 1.9 million. Today, it's population is half that, at 900,000. Public services have declined, grocery stores have all but disappeared, money and jobs have left and far more buildings are demolished than constructed. Unemployment is at 15.5%, and "the onetime 'Capital of the 20th Century' now reigns as the U.S. 'murder capital.'"

Yikes.

So what does a city in this state do? Take back its space, plant some urban gardens and produce for itself! Detroit has lots of cheap, empty space; an abundance of labor but a shortage of money; high crime and poor health.

Can planting a garden really help?

It can help all of those problems, actually. First of all, why do we work? To acquire money? Unfortunately in 2011 some of us see this as the reason, but originally I think the reason to make money was to afford those essentials that you did not produce for yourself. Like food.

So now you live in Detroit, you cannot afford fresh food (nor can you access it, anyway, with such a lack of markets) but you have ample time on your hands, as you are unemployed. So you go outside, and you start a garden. Perhaps a neighborhood garden, with your other community members. You pay little start up cash for seeds and some tools and perhaps you get a little help from The Greening of Detroit . Three months after you started, you have fresh food growing out of the ground for free. Food is what you need--not money--money was only a means of getting to food. Now you have fresh healthy food to feed your family, while when you fed them from the supermarket you had to choose Wonder bread over squash and canned string peas over real ones. You improve your family's health, and along the way, you have built community with the people who live around you. This helped to build community health, to create a safe space outdoors because of your presence, and to create a sense of self-worth and pride in your community members to replace the desperation and apathy of before. Small community by small community, the Detroits of the world can rebuild in ways like this, that serve the needs of the people in them and take advantage of the wealth of the people who populate them without exploiting them.

Ironically, governments are not usually so keen on these ideas: empowering downtrodden tends to go against their agendas, especially in the case of self-sufficiency, a word that does not please capitalism. Thus, "farming" within Detroit is essentially illegal.

This has gotten me geared up to return to my birth state and give back! When I moved from outside of Detroit to Ohio at the age of five, I had no idea that I was moving from the rich 'burbs filled with the white urban flight of 1960s, 70s and 80s Detroit. Later, when I realized the hypocrisy of where I had lived and learned about these cool, guerilla gardening-like groups trying to rebuild Detroit, I got the desire to move back--into the heart of Detroit--to lend a hand.

Another addition to my summer list: Explore Urban Planning Programs in Michigan.